Another proof - as if we needed one - of the unbiased, unparalleled quality of the German media's reporting on American politics: the Patriot Act.

The facts:

Dec. 14, 2005:The House voted to renew a modified USA Patriot Act to combat terrorism on Wednesday and sent the bill to the Senate The vote in the House was 251-174, with 44 Democrats joining 207 Republicans. "Renewing the Patriot Act before it expires in December is literally a matter of life and death," said Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla.

Dec. 22, 2005:A much-debated domestic surveillance law won a reprieve last night when senators agreed to continue it for six months to allow House and Senate negotiators to resume efforts next year to rewrite it for the longer term. ... House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., has shown little willingness to renegotiate the four-year extension his chamber had approved. "Any talk of a short-term extension is fruitless," his spokesman Jeff Lungren said several hours before the Senate deal was announced. "Chairman Sensenbrenner will not accept anything less than a four-year extension of the Patriot Act."

Congress on Thursday approved a one-month extension of the Patriot Act and sent it to President Bush in a pre-Christmas scramble to prevent many of its anti-terrorism provisions from expiring Dec. 31.

The Senate, with only Sen. John Warner, R-Va., present, approved the Feb. 3 expiration date four hours after the House, with a nearly empty chamber, bowed to Rep. James Sensenbrenner's refusal to agree to a six-month extension. ...

Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the shorter extension would force swifter Senate action and had the support of the White House and Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. ...

"A six-month extension, in my opinion, would have simply allowed the Senate to duck the issue until the last week in June," the Wisconsin Republican told reporters.

The fiction:

Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Dec. 23, 2005:The Next Low Hit for BushU.S. President George W. Bush again had to accept defeat in the House. The U.S. Parliament decided to approve only a one-month extension for the anti-terror laws.

News AgencyAFP (Agence France Press), Dec. 23, 2005:Bush Again Duped in Dispute Over Patriot ActThe House in Washington against the will of U.S. President George W. Bush has approved only a 5-week extension of the anti-terror laws of the Patriot Act. ... For the U.S. government, who initially wanted to extend the law indefinitely, the decision of the House means a heavy defeat.

To sum up things: The House rejected the Senate's proposal of a 6-month extension and approved just a one-month extension with the intention to force the Senate to accept a4-yearextension. So this was not a defeat for President Bush - rather, the House's decision gives his 4-year proposal a renewed chance.

The German media's reporting on the matter can safely be described as misleading, with a massive anti-Bush bias. On the other hand, one might argue that the German media are simply clueless about U.S. politics.

Here's the question from the NBC journalist Tim Russert and the answer from Colin Powell, from a transcript of "NBC News' Meet the Press":

Russert: In February of 2003, you put your enormous personal reputation on the line before the United Nations and said that you had solid sources for the case against Saddam Hussein. It now appears that an agent called Curveball had misled the CIA by suggesting that Saddam had trucks and trains that were delivering biological and chemical weapons. How concerned are you that some of the information you shared with the world is now inaccurate and discredited?

Powell: I'm very concerned. When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully; we looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate. And so I'm deeply disappointed. But I'm also comfortable that at the time that I made the presentation, it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it. (emphasis added)

Question and answer both refer to the source resp. the sourcing of the information the CIA received and forwarded to the Secretary of State. The sourcing was, in Powell's words, "deliberately misleading" - not the CIA. The CIA was deliberately misled by the source, according to Tim Russert.

May we suggest that AFP is deliberately misleading the public, just to add some anti-CIA, conspiracy type spice to an otherwise not very exciting story?

BTW: AFP stands for "Agence France-Press".

Update: This is Reuters' headline: "CIA Wrong on Iraq 'Mobile Labs,' Powell Says". Hmm..., still with a slight spin, but not as misleading as AFP Germany's headline. And AP's headline sounds rather matter-of-fact: "Powell: Some Prewar Iraq Intel Erroneous". Personally, I like this headline the most: "CIA sources on Iraq were “deliberately misleading,” Powell complains". It's from - AFP, English version. Compare this to AFP Germany's headline: "Powell accuses CIA of deliberately misleading" ("Powell wirft CIA absichtliche Irreführung vor").

Germany's media painstakingly avoid the term "terrorists" for the Palestinian terrorists who coldbloodedly killed a pregnant Israeli woman and her four children. Of course, the German media don't hesitate to identify terrorists, when the killing is in Madrid, Riad, Manila, Mazedonia, etc., etc.

In the case of Israelis, it's not barbaric terrorism ... it's "Cycle of Violence".

Naomi Regan is a novelist living in Jerusalem. I'm on her mailing list. This is her comment to the terror attack:

Two Islamic "heroes" opened fire on a car carrying a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy, along with her four little girls. They opened fire on the car, and when it spun out of control, they walked towards it and shot the woman and her daughters one by one. ... I'm trying to envision the kind of people that could shoot a pregnant woman and an eleven, nine, seven and two year old. I'm trying. But all I come up with is Nazis. All I see are Auschwitz criminals. I guess that's Islam. I guess that's the way they honor their Prophet Mohammad. I guess that's the honor they bring to their Allah.

The August 6, 2001, memo did not refer to a planned attempt to fly planes into skyscrapers. All it says is:

- Bin Laden since 1997 wanted to "bring the fighting to America".

- "We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted text] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists."

So he planned hijackings of airplanes to press for the release of his underlings - hardly a pretext for flying these planes into buildings.

- "Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."

Note, that these are alternatives in the memo: "preparations for hijackings" and "other other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." There was no suspicion that the hijackings could lead to the destruction of buildings. Actually, the perceived threat to "federal buildings in New York" was based on the observation of tourists taking pictures of buildings in New York:

"...the information relating to the possible surveillance of federal buildings in New York, which was later determined by the FBI to be consistent with tourist-related activity..." (Fact Sheet, Press Office of The White House)

And here are headlines of German media reporting on the August 6 memo:

(Oops, Al Jazzeera is not a German media outlet, but the well know anti-Israel, anti-American, pro-Hamas, pro-Hizbollah Arab news organization. Don't know why they fit in here...)

While it is true that the actual reporting in the above-mentioned German media moves away from the impression given in the headlines, it's the headlines that stick in people’s minds.

My forecast: within a very short time the German media will regularly quote the "fact" that Bush already knew in August 2001 about the planned destruction of the WTC. And after a bit more time has passed - probably right before the election in November - there will be reporting in the German media indicating a conspiracy between neocons (Bush himself?) and Al Qaeda to destroy the WTC in order to ... (please choose one) create new jobs in the New York construction industry / grab Iraqi oil / undermine Saudi Arabia / throw Russia and France out of Iraq.

Anything's possible in the German media, if it fits into their anti-Bush agenda...

Update: I swear I hadn't seen this Cox & Forkum cartoon when I wrote the last two paragraphs...

Reuters - Palestinian militants killed a settler and a two-month-old baby girl in an attack on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Friday as Israelis celebrated the Jewish New Year.

AFP: An Israeli man and a baby girl were shot dead and two others wounded when a Palestinian gunman infiltrated a Jewish settlement in the southern West Bank shortly after the start of the Jewish New Year, Israeli sources said.

AP: A Palestinian attacked a Jewish settlement in the West Bank and killed two people — including an infant — before he was killed Friday night, emergency workers said. The attack came as Israelis began celebrating the Jewish New Year.